Why footballers have to be concern with personal branding?

For me, and maybe for most of my friends also a struggle ? being a football player is fun. How can you earn so many things by doing your hobby? But I'm aware of how short life as a football player is. Especially when we also realize that one year in our football career is delayed because of the pandemic in 2020.

But giving up is certainly not an option. Everyone has a goal, for me, it means that we really need to use football as part of ourselves to plan strategic things, create and develop personal branding, either in our daily life, society or on social media.

In my opinion, personal branding is very important for football players. Personal branding can make us appear as a multidimensional person. To show how we have another life besides football and show as football players, we are just human beings. And this is usually what our fans are looking for.

So, how's it going? As I've experienced, personal branding offers me a lot of benefits. I think personal branding is also an investment. Just give a little time, energy, thoughts and even material at risk to increase visibility, potential sponsorship agreements and, as a result, increase market value and income.

I've also read some journal that top football player needs to build strong personal branding in order to be recognized and considered by brands in the sports and the football industry. The end result of a carefully executed personal branding strategy is an increase in overall player value.

In my opinion, good personal branding is to be able to identify your most important characteristics, and process them into important qualities and above all choose the dominant attributes that serve as anchors. Every football player who wants to do personal branding first needs to know the core values he wants to use.

Personally, I have not seen many of the best football players in Indonesia to take this opportunity. I often see that some of them even avoid journalists who want to ask for their statements. However, that's a great opportunity to show who we are and how we deal with the situation. Even on several occasions, the club's internal media wanted to record and interview, but there were still people who were shy.

Moreover, there is a difference between offline and online. On social media, every player has the same chance. But again, I haven't seen that many players literate with social media. Especially when pandemic approaches and disrupts our content resources. I have not seen any literate Indonesian players regularly uploading their content.

At this moment, content creation plays an integral role when it comes to social media. We need to be more flexible, honest and attractive to individuals, audiences and potential sponsors, and thus have another positive impact. The content must relate to the professional and personal life of the player, with the aim of building a complete picture of their life.

Maybe the reason is that during the pandemic, their content ideas decrease, but I think content can be created in any situation if we see it as an opportunity. What we do at home, what to eat, what to do in the gym, happy moments with family, those can be explored by footballers.

At the end of the day, I don't want to insist that as a football player, this should and must be done. But I would like to remind you that as football players we have great potential and can even compete with celebrities.

I am very happy to discuss this with you. If you are a footballer who reads this and wants to discuss or learn with me, don't hesitate to contact me.

Marc Klok